With warm greetings from Saarbruecken, Saarland, Germany,
Vitaly Friedman

I have been told many times that I take things too personally, but I can’t let go of it completely, because I have been proved right as many times as I was wrong. Descerning between criticsm/comment and personal affront is the difficult thing!

Honestly I believe that I am a very intuitive person and many times when people think they have gotten away with passing “personalised” remarks, I catch them on it, and normally they deny, but many times we talk it out and everything comes out into the open…

I have two questions. How do I handle the weakness of my own? And how do I actually get results from aggressive players, who are used to steam rolling the cllient into giving up? (Mirroring may work in the immediate, but over the phone to someone who has no intention of meeting their deadlines can become a hopeless situation for the client)

Great Article!

Thank you,

I used to have several ones and they all moved the way of the dodo by being treated with NAET (see http://www.naet.com/).

It’s really incredible how well it works.

Talking about peanut allergy, a relative who went in shock just by smelling them is now completely OK.

Of course, this is not helping the drug vendors

Empowering questions require you to have insight into what the real problem / driving force is in the other person. A simple one is “Why do you need to do that?”, and many more are above. One of the key things about an EQ is that it is specific to a situation, so if you get it wrong, it will be an irrelevant question : “why do you want to drink?” - obvious answer: “to get drunk”.

I’d like to add a note of warning about this technique (one of the basics of counselling that many [counsellors] do not realise). It is easy to open a wound, but unless you have the insight and truth to be able to help heal, you will do more harm than good.
Catharsis can be helpful in some situations, but often it is just a pressure release and allow opening for healing the underlying issues. Chatharsis in itself is not a goal, and excessive catharsis should start warning bells.

Oh, I re-read my comment and want to add one more think (another counselling basic): you must have permission to ask an empowering question. They can be very powerful, and can receive a very powerful response. An expert in this technique (NOT me), can reduce people to tears within minutes or seconds.

So, don’t be arrogant, listen, and above all, question and evaluate yourself (debrief) after every “session”. If you want to help, you have to help yourself improve.

This is prime for arguments that begin with the word “You”

“You don’t appreciate what I do around here,”
“You don’t trust me with…”
“You didn’t tell me that…”
“Why do you always…”
“You’re not…”

These are arguments where even admitting to be at fault doesn’t always end the yelling, blaming, or stonewalling.

Therapists have given similar advice. By repeating what the other person has said, you’re making it clear that you are listening to them, no matter how insane they seem at the time, and you are making them listen to themselves. I’ve had arguments where I’ve said “Listen to yourself! How can you say that? You don’t know what you’re saying!” when the more appropriate response would have been “you mean to tell me that ….” and repeat what they’ve said.

The main problem I have with the tactics described in this article is that they fail to address whatever issue(s) the other person is having such strong feelings about, focusing instead on how to deflect those issues back at the person (i.e. “becomming a mirror”). I think a better approach would be to listen, analyze, and understand, and move from there.

I read some of the above comments with great interest (didn’t have time to read all of them). I practice NVC (nonviolent communiation, Rosenberg) as oft as I am able. For me, the practice above is something that would have been a first step to a change in consciousness. This “tactic,” if you will, would have been very helpful for me while I was making the shift in philosophy/consciousness to NVC. The whole “I am right and you are wrong” paradigm is difficult to ditch and finding away to let go of it is very liberating. In doing so, I think one is not allowing oneself to be held hostage by another’s anger. His method does not signify anywhere close to an endpoint of where I want to be energetically, but it’s a step in the “more connected” direction. I am feeling thankful for this article regardless of the fact that it’s far from my ideal for communication. There always has to be some kind of starting point when one travels down a new road.

This article was linked on digg.com and received hundreds of diggs there, which consequently sent some new traffic to this page (over 10,000 extra visitors and counting). However, it wasn’t clear to many of those visitors that this was a follow-up article to a previous post (as noted in the first sentence of the article). It’s clear from some of the comments that many people didn’t read the first part of the article, which is pretty important to understand the context of this article. If you read this article on its own without the context of the first article, I can see how it might convey a very different meaning.

For clarity… this article was only written within the context of dealing with difficult relatives (as explained in detail in the original article). The concepts were never intended to be extended outside that context, such as to having arguments with co-workers or proving who has the best facts.

Perhaps I’ll add some extra text to the opening of the article to help clarify that it’s a follow-up and not a stand-alone post.

Please forgive me my incompetent English.

How would you deal with a type of person sometiems called ‘energy vampire’? The characteristic behaviuor of such people is, in brief, whining. They often engage you into a kind of consolidation, with a phrases like “I’m bad. I’m a broke. I’m loser. I feel terrible. I will fail.” Then, when you try to comfort them, they develop the frustration, and whatever you say they find yet another negative point. This may be targeted on a person’s own self, or an event, or whaterver else they’d imagine.

The problem with this is that you spend your own energy on giving relief, but don’t get anything valuable in return. I see three possible ways out of this situation:
- just terminate the relationship altogeather
- learn to give what they want without any harm for yourself
- learn to quickly (or permanently) shift the person’s view to positive.

What would you advise?

Thank you,
please cc: the reply to email if you’re interested in the topic,
Bohdan.

The best and most honorable way to avoid getting sucked into an argument is to just flat-out say, “I can see we’re both passionate about our opinions on this subject. Maybe it’s best we just agree to disagree.” I guarantee, this will immediately end your unpleasant conversation and is much more satisfying than using obfuscatory language to frustrate your opponent.

By the way, if your intent is to burn the communications bridge, then you might as well blow up the dam along with it. Try this — no matter what someone is telling you, just respond by saying, “I know you say that now, but you’ll come around eventually…..sooner or later, they all come around.” Don’t forget to smirk and nod knowingly. Then sit back and watch the fireworks!

Really, if you want to head off silly ill-informed criticism from the commenters here who just Don’t Get It, you can summarise thus: Listening Is More Important Than Talking, and Thinking Is More Intelligent Than Reacting. All else is froth — informative, illustrative, worthwhile, but ultimately froth.